Although the law stipulates all Texas public universities end DEI, Sherry Sylvester of the Texas Public Policy Foundation states that's easier said than done. Most universities are going to do what they can to resist.
"The programs are reflected in student programs. They're reflected in the way the university is governed and the role that the faculty has in governing the university. So, there are many, many more battles to fight,” Sylvester said.
Law is five months old
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed the anti-DEI bill in June. DEI employees at many universities immediately went on offense.
“Conversation of how to push back are being conducted in hushed tones—not in whispers, but not entirely out in the open either,” Valerie Sansone, an assistant professor of higher education at Texas-San Antonio told Insider Higher Education. “We’re not necessarily using our state university emails to communicate about this. You’ve got to be a little smarter than that.”
Whether or not Ms. Sansone is “a little smarter than that” is an open question, since she chose to share the news of the covert operation with a reporter from Inside Higher Education, a national publication that boosts almost 400,000 subscribers, Sylvester wrote for TPPF’s news outlet, The Cannon Online.
She points out the arrogance many administrators and faculty members have in resisting change.
"They don't think they're right. They know they're right. So, they believe that people who do not want to divide students by race or ethnicity or gender, they think they're wrong."
Sylvester says it's hard to imagine anything more detrimental to students than DEI programs, and unraveling the ideology from universities will take a long time.
Sansone and her DEI colleagues in “the resistance” are fighting the basic premise of all civil rights legislation and the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution—that there should be no differential treatment in America on the basis of race, Sylvester wrote in The Cannon Online.
Know thy enemy
According to the Inside Higher Education news story, “DEI Officers Gear Up for Battle in Red States” the DEI crowd describes their enemy as “[university] board members, lawmakers and the voting public.”
Only Texas and Florida (two of the three largest states in the union) have an outright ban on DEI, but nearly 20 other states are considering taking similar steps.
